Sponsorship
is needed for the 2014 Relay For Life of Noble County. This year’s American
Cancer Society event will begin with an Opening Ceremony at 10 a.m. Saturday,
May 17th, at the West Noble High School track and field south of
Ligonier. The theme chosen is “Racing For A Cure”.

Fourteen
teams have already registered—and this year, if team members recruit a sponsor,
the donations for that sponsor can go toward the team’s total goals. Sponsors
can be any kind of business, organization, volunteer group, church, and any
other group or individual who wants to get involved in the fight against
cancer. But the deadline for sponsorship is April 4th, which is
coming up fast.

For more information about the Noble County Relay For
Life and how you can get involved, contact Mike White at (260) 302-2052 or
mjw_2013@hotmail.com

Relay For Life participants
and visitorshave a chance to celebrate
the victory of local cancer survivors during the Survivors Lap; remember those
who are fighting cancer or those who have lost their battle to the disease
during the Luminaria Ceremony; and participate in the Fight Back Ceremony,
which gives everyone a chance to proclaim his or her own way of taking action
against the disease.

Bob Beckley and Ligonier Assistant Fire Chief Jerry Sprague debate which of them is closest to being as old as Bob Brownell.

SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK

After three
decades as a volunteer firefighter, I … hurt. A lot, especially when it’s cold.
Recently I’ve been seen wearing a sling, to let my arm heal after I bent an
elbow the wrong way. (I don’t really need the sling—it’s to keep me from
reaching for stuff with my bad arm.)

Bob Beckley
was already an old timer (or so my 18-year-old self thought) when I joined. He
just hit his 40th year.

Bob
Brownell was just given his fifty year pin.

Fifty years.

And that was
because they missed the actual anniversary: He’s been a firefighter for 53
years. He was already doing the job for two decades before I walked into the
firehouse for the first time, sucking on a bottle and wetting my pants. (Just
kidding … I wasn’t sucking on a bottle. I left it in the car.)

Now, what
else happened around 53 years ago? Hm. Well, 52 years ago, although I don’t
actually remember it …

Holy cow.
Bob Brownell has been fighting fires since before
I was born.

And the
rest of us still have to fight him for the friggin’ fire nozzle.

Maybe it’s
a Bob thing. Maybe being a Bob gives you more energy somehow; maybe it’s one of
those mystical names that keeps you young even longer than sleeping under a
pyramid, or marrying Playboy

bunnies.

Brownell
would have started around 1961 or so. Kennedy was President. In Albion, our
newest truck was a 1952 fire engine, the first engine I rode to a fire almost
two decades later. It had a manual transmission with about 42 speeds on it.

And I’m tired?

Now,
Brownell is a transfer, which means he didn’t start with our department. What
happened was, he started on a different fire department, wore all of them out,
then moved to another one. Then all the young guys on that department got tired
of him making them look bad, so he left there and came to us. You know those
stories about immortal people who moved every few decades so people wouldn’t
notice they aren’t aging? That’s Brownell.

The truth
is, Bob didn’t learn to be a firefighter: He invented firefighting. Yep. He was
just sitting around with Ben Franklin one day, sipping on a Sam Adams (the
beer, I mean—he’s not a vampire. I think.)

Then Ben,
who later died because he’s not Bob, used his well known powers of observation:
“Say … Bob, you don’t appear to have aged a day since I met you during the
Frenching Indian War.” (No, that’s not a typo: Ben was quite a party animal.)

Bob had to
think fast, because he’d already been kicked out of Rome after organizing
slaves into the first fire brigade (which gives a certain irony to the term
“volunteer”). Later he had to leave London, after he helped fight the Great Fire
of the unfortunately numbered year 1666. With no buildings left to burn he
couldn’t get any firefighting action, so he went over to the Colonies and met
an expert at getting action, Ben Franklin.

Together,
Franklin and Bob invented false teeth—sadly not perfected for George
Washington—along with an early version of the Walkman, and the disco ball.
These last two were not successful, as it was only afterward that they
discovered electricity.

Anyone, Bob
wasn’t ready to move on just yet, so he had to distract Franklin. Seeing no
woman nearby, he said, “Say, Ben, you know what we should do? Form a volunteer
fire department.”

“Oh, I
don’t know … I’m a little leery of flames ever since we flew that kite and the
lightning set my wig on fire.”

“You look
fine bald. Besides, the chicks love firefighters.”

“Oh! Why
didn’t you say so?”

So they
formed the Union Fire Company, and both men were happy to learn the chicks did,
indeed, love firefighters, and things went just great until Bob started not getting old. He moved to Cincinnati
and helped develop the first steam powered fire engine, which the firefighters
wanted to name the “Bob Brownell” but was instead named the "Uncle Joe
Ross", after a City Council member. Politics! But it’s just as well,
because 150 years later Bob would have some explaining to do.

So we’re
lucky to have Bobs on our fire department. You know, something just occurred to
me: Maybe Bob Beckley isn’t one of a line of Beckleys on the AFD. Maybe it was
the same Bob all along—Chief in 1959, and Chief in 1994. Maybe firefighting
Bobs really are immortal …

Just like
the spirit of volunteerism. See what I did there?

Now, I’m
off to change my name.

“Give me my service pin, you whipper-snapper; I’ve been doing this so long that we had to invent fire, just so we could put it out.”

The Relay
For Life of Noble County will have a booth this year at Showcase Ligonier,
which will be held at the Cross Walk at Ligonier United Methodist Church, 466 Townline
Road on Saturday, March 29th.

Showcase Ligonier,
sponsored by the Ligonier Chamber Of Commerce, offers a day of family fun,
information, food and door prizes. It’s all designed to put the spotlight on
the greater West Noble area. Hours are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and admission is free,
with many door prizes available including a flat-screen TV. Those attending are
asked to bring nonperishable food items for the West Noble Food Pantry.

In addition to the Relay, more than 35 exhibitors
have booths. Food concessions will be sold, and events include Bingo operated
by West Noble American Legion Post 243. The Ligonier Police department will be
there to offer Operation KidPrint ID, which provides parents with photo
identification cards for their children.

The 2014
Relay For Life of Noble County will be held May 17-18 at the West Noble High
School track and field, south of Ligonier. The theme chosen is “Racing For A
Cure”.

For more information about the Relay and how you can
get involved, contact Mike White at (260) 302-2052 or mjw_2013@hotmail.com

There are a
lot of things in the world we like, but could live without. Our favorite TV
shows, for instance. Sports teams, coffee (!), videos of cute kittens, even the
internet.

Okay, maybe
not the internet, now that we’re hooked.

But there’s
one thing most of us really can’t do without, even if other people think
otherwise. Something that makes the world go around (metaphorically … who
knows, maybe literally). Something that, if lost, would cause more withdrawal
than caffeine-laced crack.

But now,
horribly, there’s a shortage of chocolate.

I’ll pause
now until the horrified screams die down.

The world,
according to experts, is facing its worst cocoa deficit in 50 years. Not to go
on a tangent, but how does one become a cocoa expert? Do I not qualify as one,
after half a century as a connoisseur? I mean, come on: I’ve eaten more
chocolate than Obama’s hit golf balls. I’ve popped more M&M’s than Charlie
Sheen has popped pills, including aspirin. I’ve bought more chocolate bars than
Fort Knox has gold bars, but now it seems the chocolate bars may be more
valuable.

Not that I
wouldn’t eat them anyway.

The
International Cocoa Organization says cocoa demand exceeds output, a gap they
predict will spread to 70,000 metric tons – not up to Federal deficit
standards, but any time chocolate combines with red it’s a bad thing (except
for chocolate velvet cake).

(By the
way, the ICCO should not be confused with the ICO, International Cuckoo
Organization. Go to the convention of one and you get chocolate treats; go to
the convention of the other and you get a straightjacket. At least, that’s what
Lindsay Lohan says.)

The ICCO
thinks the shortfall might go on for six years, which would be the longest
running shortage since record keeping began in 1960. It could increase prices
by 14%, making it $3,200 a ton.

What? I buy
cocoa by the ton—don’t you?

The good
news is that chocolate isn’t made of just cocoa. Ingredients include chocolate
liquor, cocoa butter, sugar, lecithin, and vanilla.

The bad
news is, two of those five items come from cocoa.

(You don’t
want to know what lecithin is, but rest assured: Having the word “thin” in its
name means nothing.)

To turn
chocolate into milk chocolate—and please do, thanyouverymuch—requires … are you
ready for this? Milk.

But it
takes about 400 cocoa beans to make a pound of any kind of chocolate, so we
can’t depend on the other ingredients to save us. The problem stems partly from
where cocoa is grown, according to commodities manager Ashmead Pringle. I threw
his name in because “Pringle” in relation to an article on cocoa made me
giggle. I assume Pringles already has a chocolate dipped chip.

Pringle
(Hee!) says cocoa is produced in African countries that tend to be politically
and meteorologically unstable. To make matters worse, farmers have no incentive
to produce more, because when the price goes up their pay doesn’t. I guess
farming is the same all over.

Meanwhile,
the demand for cocoa is predicted to hit 7.3 million tons next year, a pace
that hasn’t slowed despite my appeals for everyone except me to decrease their
consumption. I certainly didn’t help the matter by experimenting withdouble chocolate-dipped Snickers bars.

Here’s one
answer: Grow your own. Unfortunately, cocoa needs tropical climates—it
originated in Central and South America, after all, areas that were a paradise
before the Spanish showed up and forced the Natives to eat a more balanced
diet. In addition to there, cocoa is now grown in a few small areas of Asia, but
most still comes from West Africa. It can’t just be planted in a person’s back
yard, and don’t think I didn’t try. Maybe I should have taken the wrapper off,
first.

What we
need, then, are greenhouses, or some kind of large area with special lights
that will allow cocoa to grow-grow. I considering building one of my own, and
thus never having to depend on anyone else for my supply and … oh, boy. I guess
I am addicted, huh?

So I
checked on the cost and how much work it would be, and I’m not doing it.

Then I came
up with another brilliant idea. (The first was in 1993.) What about all those
marijuana dealers who get busted for growing pot? The police confiscate
vehicles involved in drug distribution—why not confiscate their growing places,
too?

I know, brilliant.
Granted, it’s swapping one addiction for another, but no one ever suffered from
secondhand chocolate … just from a lack of it.

So there
you have it, problem solved. Also, by busting the pot growers you’re cutting
down on people baking pot into brownies, and thus saving extra cocoa even as
you’re growing new. In no time at all, the cocoa supply will be replenished.

This year’s
Noble County Relay For Life is ramping up, with committee and team captain
meetings scheduled for Thursday, March 20th, in Albion.

Everyone is
welcome, especially if you’re ready to sign up a team. The Relay Committee
meeting is from 6-7 p.m. at the Cole Room, in the Noble County Public Library
main branch in Albion. A team captain meeting will follow, at 7 p.m.

The 2014 Relay For Life of Noble Countywill take place on May 17-18th at West
Noble High School beginning at 10:00 a.m. that Saturday.For more information about the kickoff event
or on how you can get involved, contact Mike White at (260) 302-2052 or
mjw_2013@hotmail.com

Relay For Life participants
and visitorshave a chance to celebrate the
victory of local cancer survivors during the Survivors Lap; remember those who
are fighting cancer or those who have lost their battle to the disease during
the Luminaria Ceremony; and participate in the Fight Back Ceremony, which gives
everyone a chance to proclaim his or her own way of taking action against the
disease.

# # #

About the American Cancer Society

The American Cancer Society is a global grassroots
force of more than three million volunteers saving lives and fighting for every
birthday threatened by every cancer in every community. As the largest
voluntary health organization, the Society's efforts have contributed to a 20
percent decline in cancer death rates in the U.S. since 1991, and a 50 percent
drop in smoking rates. Thanks in part to our progress nearly 14 million
Americans who have had cancer and countless more who have avoided it will
celebrate more birthdays this year. After marking our 100th birthday in 2013,
we're determined to finish the fight against cancer. We're finding cures as the
nation’s largest private, not-for-profit investor in cancer research,
ensuring people facing cancer have the help they need and continuing the fight
for access to quality health care, lifesaving screenings, clean air, and more.
For more information, to get help, or to join the fight, call us anytime, day
or night, at 1-800-227-2345 or visit cancer.org.